I asked for it, and you delivered. On Christmas Eve, I invited you to say what annoys you most about the misuse of English today. The response was almost overwhelming: I could fill the entire winter's columns with your pet peeves. Thank you for your righteous indignation, your grammatical rage, your grumpy eloquence. From the few hundred suggestions I received, here are 10 winners -I mean, 10 losers.

A Girl Like I is the title of Anita Loos's autobiography--a gesture to her most famous creation, the grammatically inept (or is it brilliant?) Lorelei, "authoress" of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. I don't have a problem with it.

I've noticed a marked increase of "gladhanding" on the radio and in various publications lately. Colour me suspicious.

Ok, here's another one - just a personal peeve - TV or similar host introduces guest, saying: "Give it up for ..."

Your host is a close relative of she who says, "We have to leave it there..."

A new one I've heard on Leafs radio broadcasts (and I love listening to Jim Ralph and Dennis/Joe Beyak/Bowen) on a daily basis is "...from an 'X' standpoint...." This "standpoint" seems to have become the new "in terms of." The bottom line is that they have to elevate their discourse in terms of their lexical choices.

I've noticed a trend whereby someone who must describe something cannot do so without throwing out a "basically". Basically, it's basic that basically basic things should be described as basic, basically.

If you must describe something, don't try to dumb it down. And if what you are describing, then leave the basically out of it.

Basically
.
Ha! Now you'll all be noticing it everywhere, and it'll drive you nuts.

Parentheses. I use them way too much, and I'm not alone. A nagging thought tells me they're not proper literary style for ordinary prose (if you know what I mean). When you're expressing a thought (and isn't that a principal function of writing?), you ought to be able to avoid tangents (in the non-mathematical sense) or separate out explanatory passages into separate sentences (or paragraphs), or (perhaps best) avoid them altogether.

Conservatives are trained not to use the language of liberals. Liberals are not so trained. Liberals have to learn not to stick to their own language, and not move rightward in language use. Never use the word "entitlement' - social security and medicare are earned. Taking money from them is stealing. Pensions are delayed payments for work already done. They are part of contracted pay for work. Not paying pensions is taking wages from those who have earned them. Nature isn't free for the taking. Nature is what nurtures us, and is of ultimate value - human value as well as economic value. Pollution and deforestation are destroying nature. Privatization is not eliminating government - it is introducing government of our lives by corporations, for their profit, not ours. The mission of government is to protect and empower all citizens, because no one makes it on their own. And the more you get from government, the more you owe morally. Government is about "necessities" - health, education, housing, protection, jobs with living wages, and so on - not about "programs." Economic success lies in human well-being, not in stock prices, or corporate and bank profits.

These are truths. We need to use language that expresses those truths.

Say "social justice" on a USian forum and they trhrow red paint all over you. It's become a dirty word.

Yes, we absolutely (sorry; no way around this one) have to take back the language; to say what we really mean, rather than what we feel we can get away with in the current political climate. They should not be allowed to frame all the issues.

Why not return to 1937 and see the same concerns for syntax in the Saul Bellow Letters ,( Viking, 2010) when a 22-year-old Bellow, writing to a magazine editor, shows us the complexity and confusion among young ideologues: "However, if we load the magazine with Bolshevik writers of national reputation... Already the Stalinites have excommunicated (the editor) and pronounced the magazine anathema. Jack Martin, local educational director of the C.P. wrote Harris (the editor) a letter calling him a fascist record, agent of the Gestapo and a few other unoriginal things. It is peculiar how the Stalinites have lost central discipline by spreading themselves through liberal groups. They are scattered so widely ...and every day little fresh-faced YCL boy scouts come to ask space for the American Youth Congress or United Christian Youth meetings...

"Of course we have not yet lost the CP. For the liberals swarm around us, and as inevitably as fruit flies gather on lush bananas, so do (Earl) Browder's minions flock to liberals."

Running as Communist candidate for President in the 1936 election, Browder won 80,195 votes.

Marvelous how a word or name can come to be so easily dismissed in an anti-intellectual atmosphere, lacking any conception of the history of a word, like 'liberal' - or a name like "Lakoff" - and finally having all the effect and meaning of a fart in a windstorm.

You have "had enough of" the name Lakoff? I have had a bellyful of empty, post-modernist, ahistorical rhetoric.

Beginning every response to a request for information with "So..." as if you haven't just been asked a question; or as if, for example, on broadcast media, your interviewer has interrupted you in the middle of a story.

"Conspiracy theorist" is wearing thin for me. It's as if everyone and their dog is trying to smear the most democratic governments ever. Comrades, the meters on government bs detectors zero-out with transparency and accountability to the public. It's all about freedom, baby, yeah!!

Something I've noticed on American TV and I think sometimes Wiretap, using the word "with" without an object, as in: "Want to come with?" [..me?"] "Why don't you come with?" [...us?"] With the tonal emphasis falling on "with".

Where did this come from? It's irritating in a way that also compels you to try it in your own conversation. And then you feel stupid. But you will probably do it again.

And I think it's going to catch on in a really irritating way. It will probably turn into one of 2011's most hated turns of phrase. You saw it here first.

Yeah when I read the word wiretap, I tend to conjure up images of some creepy guy out on the telephone poll in front of some poor slob's home and patching in to his phone line with a belt full of tools for the job. That's not the way they do it anymore. Modern techniques are much more sophisticate today. It's much, much easier for the feds to spy on the lives of millions at a time. In fact, it's what they do. "Wiretap" makes it sound like just another case of the good ol' boys foiling bank robbers and stuff. It's creepier than that.

Something I've noticed on American TV and I think sometimes Wiretap, using the word "with" without an object, as in: "Want to come with?" [..me?"] "Why don't you come with?" [...us?"] With the tonal emphasis falling on "with".

Where did this come from? It's irritating in a way that also compels you to try it in your own conversation. And then you feel stupid. But you will probably do it again.

And I think it's going to catch on in a really irritating way. It will probably turn into one of 2011's most hated turns of phrase. You saw it here first.

This isn't really that new. It's slang coming from teen speak circa late 90's to early 2000's. If you want to blame tv for bringing to the forefront blame Buffy the Vampire Slayer. They used it quite a bit on the show. Well at least enough that when I read this comment I heard Buffy's and Willow's voice speaking the words.

My most hated word of the past year is "stick-to-it-iveness." What's wrong with "persistence, or even a nice clause: "the ability to stick to a task?" Writers and speakers should read George Orwell's essay, "Politics and the English Language." (www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/orwell46.htm).